Yesterday I discussed the story of how Zoroaster, identified with Ham, carved the seven liberal arts on fourteen pillars, seven of bronze and seven of brick, in order to preserve them from flood and fire just before the fictitious Assyrian king Ninus defeated him in battle. I thought that for the sake of completeness I should offer a couple of more pieces of information. Most importantly, I discovered that Petrus Comestor was not the first to report the story. Instead, it appears a few decades before his influential medieval text in Hugh of St. Victor, Adnotationes Elucidatoriae in Pentateuchon at Gen. 11 (c. 1130), which I give here in my translation: “Cham [...] king of Bactria was conquered by Ninus and called Zoroaster, the inventor and creator of the evil mathematical arts (i.e. astrology). He inscribed the seven liberal arts on fourteen pillars, seven bronze and seven brick, against the possibility of a flood, in order to provide usefulness to posterity. His books on mathematics Ninus, having gained victory, had burned.”

Hugh of St. Victor was not a particularly original thinker, and the fact that his version of the story is somewhat less polished that that of Petrus (who included fire alongside flood) suggests that Hugh was not the originator of the story either. I do not know exactly where it came from, but quite clearly grows out of the account in St. John Cassian at the end of Antiquity that “Ham the son of Noah, … knew that he could not possibly bring any handbook on these subjects into the ark, [so he] inscribed these nefarious arts and profane devices on plates of various metals which could not be destroyed by the flood of waters, and on hard rocks…” (Collationes 8.21, trans. C. S. Gibson).

For whatever reason, this became conflated with the Antique story of Ninus’ conquest of Zoroaster. As Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson discussed in his study of ancient sources on Zoroaster’s life, Eusebius indicates that the two were contemporaries in Praeparatio Evangelica10.9.10: “in his (Ninus’) time Zoroastres the Magian reigned over the Bactrians.” Paulus Orosius, a contemporary of Augustine, in his History against the Pagans 1.4.3 had it that Ninus was the killer of Zoroaster, king of Bactria. Augustine said in City of God21.14 that Ninus conquered Zoroaster. Isidore of Seville follows suit in Etymologies 8.9 and in his Chronicle. The whole sorry mess derives from a misreading of Ctesias, who wrote that Ninus battled Oxyartes (Diodorus, Library2.6), which was misread as Xaortes or Zaortes. Thus Justin, in his epitome of Trogus, said that Zoroaster, inventor of magic, had a war with Ninus in which Ninus killed him (1.1.9-10), as did Arnobius a century later in the Adversus Gentes1.5, speaking of “a war between the Assyrians and Bactrians, under the leadership of Ninus and Zoroaster respectively.”

As should be clear, the mistaken Late Antique identification of Ham with Zoroaster led to the transfer of the Pillars of Wisdom from Ham to Zoroaster, now a king of ancient Iran. But who first multiplied the pillars to fourteen I know not… It may be lost to history.

One thing that is not, however, is one of the most popular forms of the story, given in the Ovide moralisé 1.2405-2423 (composed c. 1317-1328), a 72,000-line Christian retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and to the best of my knowledge never translated from Old French into English. In this passage, the author has moved the whole event before the Flood and recombined Zoroaster’s fourteen pillars with the standard two pillars (of marble and brick) described by Flavius Josephus. I give here the lines, in which I have tried to give the sense of meaning rather than always follow the poetical form:

Cham made seven pillars of marbleAnd seven of brick, on which he wroteThe seven sciences which he possessed.He did this because he knewThat there would twice come a timeWhen the earth would be destroyed,Once by water and once by flame. He did not wantThat the sciences should perish,And so, in order that they would not perish,On marble, which would not dissolve,No matter how long it was submerged underwater,And for fear of the coming judgment,He inscribed the seven liberal arts and sciences.And he inscribed them in brick — because the flames wouldOnly make the arts more solidThe drier and harder they became --In order to preserve their memory.This Cham, of whom this history speaks,Is called Zoroaster.

Isn’t it interesting the way a legend is composed of so many discrete parts, each twisted, confused, conflated, and recombined into something new?

Is it safe to interpret the seven pillars as the seven liberal arts? There is endless debate over the original reference to the seven pillars of wisdom in Proverbs 9:1, and the liberal arts interpretation may be as wrong as the Zoroaster identification.

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Seven

6/13/2015 11:03:05 am

Menorah = Seven days in Genesis
Pillars in Freemasonry = seventh letter is G for Geometry and Grand Architect of the Universe

I couldn't speak to the original meaning of the seven pillars in Proverbs, but the medieval people who invented the Zoroaster myth seem to have understood Zoroaster's pillars as representing the seven liberal arts. I'd probably doubt that the seven pillars of Proverbs were the liberal arts since, as far as I know, Martianus Capella invented the canonical seven liberal arts in Late Antiquity.

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Seven

6/13/2015 11:32:44 am

Chronicles of Jerahmeel

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/coj/coj028.htm

Seven

6/13/2015 11:38:21 am

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/coj/coj036.htm

Chronicles of Jerahmeel XXXII

(4) Ninus vanquished Zoroastres the Wise, who discovered the art of Nigromancia, i.e., Nagirā, (###). He reigned in Bractia (Bactria), and had written down the seven sciences (or arts) on fourteen pillars, seven of brass and seven of brick, so that they should be proof against the water—of the flood—and against the fire—of the day of judgment. But Ninus vanquished him, and burnt the books of wisdom

It's highly suspicious that Jerhameel and Petrus Comestor both give the same misspelling of Bactria.

David Bradbury

6/14/2015 05:06:11 am

It looks as if we're seeing various facets of a very long and messy process by which the Bible-focused culture of the later Roman empire attempted to assimilate aspects of classical culture (much as it adopted and repurposed pagan festivals). Varro of Reate's nine liberal arts (1st century BCE) may have been edited down to Capella's seven specifically to harmonise with Proverbs 9:1 and related Jewish traditions.

[Meanwhile, the Chronicles of Jerahmeel seem to have been compiled in the 14th century, so the date of their source material is very questionable]

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